Eisner Awards: The Complete Winners List

Courtesy of Sana Takeda/Image Comics

'Monstress'

'Monstress' and 'My Favorite Thing Is Monsters' were big winners Friday at the comics industry's Oscars.

Two titles stood out amongst the winners of this year’s Will Eisner Comic Industry Awards, presented at San Diego Comic-Con, with Marjorie Liu and Sana Takeda’s Monstress and Emil Ferris’ My Favorite Thing Is Monsters making near-clean sweeps of the categories in which they were nominated.

Awarded during a presentation Friday night, Monstress took best continuing series, best publication for teens, best painter/multimedia artist (for Takeda), best cover artist (again, for Takeda) and best writer (for Liu, who split that category for Mister Miracle and Batman writer Tom King). The critically acclaimed graphic novel My Favorite Thing Is Monsters took best writer/artist, best coloring and best graphic album, new.

Another multiple-award winner was Katie O’Neill’s The Tea Dragon Society, which took best webcomic and publication for kids, both of which were accepted on O’Neill’s behalf by her Oni Press editor, Ari Yarwood, who spoke about the importance of making material that demonstrated to queer children that they are loved and accepted. As if to underscore that message, Tillie Walden won best reality-based work for her coming-of-age graphic novel Spinning, thanking publisher First Second for “publishing my graphic memoir about being a lesbian figure skater,” adding jokingly, “Not something I thought would happen.”

Other notable wins included Elements: Fire, A Comic Anthology by Creators of Color, which took best anthology with editor Taneka Stott, whose acceptance speech announced that she and her fellow creators would “declare war on an antiquated mentality that tells us our voices and stories aren’t ‘profitable’ enough." Another big win went to Damian Duffy and John Jennings’ adaptation of Octavia Butler’s Kindred, which won the best adaptation from another medium category.

A full list of the Eisner winners is below. (Full disclosure: I was part of the nominating panel for this year’s awards, with the final winners being decided via votes from comic industry professionals.)

Best Short Story
”A Life in Comics: The Graphic Adventures of Karen Green,” by Nick Sousanis, in Columbia Magazine(Summer 2017)

Best Single Issue/One-ShotHellboy: Krampusnacht, by Mike Mignola and Adam Hughes (Dark Horse)

Best Continuing SeriesMonstress, by Marjorie Liu and Sana Takeda (Image)